Sale 2454 - 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings, September 19, 2017

31  JAMES A. M.WHISTLER The Draped Figure, Seated . Lithograph on light tan laid Japan paper, 1893. 212x162 mm; 8 3 / 8 x6 1 / 2 inches (with legend), full margins. Edition of 107 for L’Estampe Originale , Paris, Album IV (October-December 1893). Signed with the butterfly and inscribed “No. 20” in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Way, London, with the printed inscription lower left. A superb, warm, well-inked impression showing the strong black lines on the hat and the contours of the drapery, and with all the subtle tonal variations distinct. According to Spink, “No image shows to better advantage the full range of tonal effects Whistler achieved with the stump than The Draped Figure, Seated . The artist himself clearly felt encouraged by the progress he had made with his latest experiments in this technique. When the first proofs of his five new drawings arrived from London, he wrote (from Paris to his printer Way) of this image: ‘The little sitting figure in drapery I am immensely pleased with . . . Do you see I am getting to use the stump just like a brush—and the work is beginning to have the mystery in execution of a painting.’” Way 46; Levy 74; Spink 72. [3,000/5,000]